Approaches in Physical Therapy to Unilateral Spatial Neglect

Unilateral spatial neglect: new treatment approaches with potential application to occupational therapy.

Unilateral spatial neglect is one of the most common symptoms of stroke. It has important implications for occupational therapy because of its clinical manifestations, which include problems with activities of daily living, mobility, and reading. This article reviews neurophysiological theories pertaining to unilateral spatial neglect and focuses on two new treatment approaches with potential a...

Swan Unilateral Spatial Neglect

Neurobiology of unilateral spatial neglect.

Hemispatial neglect is a common and disabling consequence of stroke. Earlier studies aimed to identify a single area of the brain where damage caused neglect and sought a single disrupted process that could account for the symptoms. Recent studies have shifted toward identifying component processes and representations underlying spatial attention required for various tasks and identifying areas...

Space representation in unilateral spatial neglect.

Patients with unilateral brain lesions were given a task requiring exploration of space with the hand in order to assess the visual dependency of unilateral spatial neglect. The task was carried out both without visual control and under visual control. Performances were compared with that of normal subjects. Results were :(1) patients with right brain damage with no visual field defect demonstr...

Time and neglect: abnormal temporal dynamics in unilateral spatial neglect.

Temporality enters our immediate experience as passage and becoming: the role time plays in the construction of a world of enduring entities tends to go unnoticed. This paper examines the relation between time and ontology in the context of unilateral neglect, a neuropsychological syndrome in which patients fail to perceive or respond to stimuli in the contralateral hemifield, behaving as if th...